Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas, Hatching of the Hippogryphs

[Deleted]

Guilds that are benching players because their theoretical sim output is a few percent lower than someone else are probably not making the right choice.

HOW can you say that blizzard? Mythic Star Augur was a dps check until you guys decided to nerf it, and was the encounter that Method wiped most on, they wiped more on Augur than Gul'dan

did they bring classes that did less dps overall? no they gathered their highest st dps classes and tried to zerg the boss down again and again.


on a dps check fights you do wanna bring most dps as possible. who cares with farm raids.

[Deleted]

At least the hatching wasn't cancelled.

[Murderdoll]

They're trying to save players from themselves because some people can't show restraint in grinding M+ every waking moment and then they complain that they are forced to.

Its not just players.

Its guilds as well. Im at 50 odd and every week its a "Hey everyone get your 54 traits". Its become an arbitrary goal and Blizzard continues to implement these goals without realised that players will burn themselves out on them.

People can blame the playerbase all they like, but end of the day, Blizzard's aim is to retain players by having a long lasting game. In the 12 years of WoW, have players EVER paced this sort of thing and said "Oh you know, its not important, ill get it sooner or later".

No. Never. Never will.

Its a very poor design choice, we voiced our concerns in beta - along with other concerns of the system (see classes like Death Knights and how theyre specs have just done a 180).

Theyve just decided to implement Diablo into WoW and its failed.

[Spiren]

It would be much better to have endless trait once all other traits are unlocked with the same AP requirement for each rank but with the power gain diminishing for each rank. This way there would be no need to pursuit AP but feel like "more AP? meh, why not..".

About guilds spending so much time playing - it's their own life, they can decide what to do with their free time, but I think there should be some limit. It would be interesting to gate the raids not with attempts, but with time spent there. What would happen if Blizzard said "you have (let's say) 12 hours (per difficulty?) per weekly raid lock, divide them as you wish"? Now that would be an interesting race. And we all would have some time to do some other things (both in-game and IRL). But Mythic+ dungeons would need some restriction too to prevent pushing them for better gear to have greater chance to kill bosses during the limited time in raids.

[Deleted]

I'm confused as to why they're deincentivising mythic+.
They want to make the game less grindy, so they're making everything time-gated grindy instead?
No longer can you spend the weekend hammering out mythic + with friends to get ap, now you're better off running one high m+ and then what, logging out until raid?

from the beginning the point of M+ was "let's give players something they can do as much as they want (kinda) with varying difficulty so they can shoot for the best they can do and try to improve each week!"
The community found the repeatability of M+ to be the path of less resistance to high AP.
Now the devs want you to shoot for the completion of a difficult dungeon, not to grind for high amounts of AP.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

I'm confused about:



What about Priaz & Sephuz? If my warrior prot got both of them, when patch 7.2 will hit, will they be considered "all specs got 2 legendaries each", "no spec got a legendary", or "tank spec got 2 legendaries"? And what about cross spec legendaries, like the Execute ring (For both Arms and Fury, but not for Prot as prot doesn't have execute)?

You're basically super-fucked if Prydaz and Sephuz are your first two legendaries.


And seriously: Fuck them for thinking that an endless grind is what the AP system needed. AP being locked to each spec, and each character, is precisely why it should have an end-point. Those of us who play at least two specs are already getting screwed, anyone who plays multiple characters is getting screwed over even harder.

Making the end-goal completely impossible is just going to make people give up. It is better to have an end-point, than setting the goal to be so impossible that all your effort feels completely worthless.

I think they need to hire a behavioral expert to help them design their reward structures. This is the second expansion in a row where they understand that there is a problem, then proceed to exacerbate the problem instead of actually fixing it.

[Niwes]

ok. they will not get rid of that shitty L system solely based on luck. sad to hear stupid blizzard killed an otherwise good expansion with their diablo mentality.

how complicated is it, to get, that in a mmorpg you wanna working long term straight towards a goal, just based on time investment (and maybe ideally skill)? no time gated shit. no luck based shit. i just wanna work for my stuff over a long time and wanna be proud when i finally earned it. thats it.

finally get what mmorpgs are designed for. this is not diablo nor an action adventure game. you damn idiots at blizz hq.

[xlanonym0uslx]

You dont understand. Each of them is unique with and epic questline to get them offering a great lore experience to the players. its not like these items are just dropping out of random boars you kill, right?... The fantasy of wielding these powerful relics is absolutely without a doubt well sold to the players and they feel very attached to how they function based on spec. Especially because you dont randomly get one of these from random places doing random stuff. Dont you feel the sorrow and sadness equipping Lanathel's ring for example? You already picture yourself in Northrend! I remember how i got mine. I was helping out the good spirits in Azsuna and was about to inspect my reward from their quartermaster then out of nothing i found this ring inside! It was strange and never explained how it got inside that box, but what a cool story and fantasy of getting one of the most powerful items in the World of Warcraft. I would really feel bad after knowing the origin of this item that it still can enhance death knights specialized in frost as well. The lore behind these items are so well established and presented to the player that it would feel very odd for gameplay reasons to just change how they work based on your spec. Anyway, never ever has anyone said at Blizz entertainment that gameplay first, this philosophy would be very alien to them.

lmao dude your example is the extreme fringe case. lore is cool and all but I don't PLAY something to learn about it. books, etc are a much better medium, they don't impede on the actual functionality of the game and fucking ruin it like legendaries do. I could care less about some dumb ring with some random person's name I've never heard of on it, and the vast majority of players aren't knowing to know or care about whoever the hell that is. none of them have a questline, and instead of random boars, it's random chests. most people don't give a fuck how they function based on spec lore-wise, would rather have an enjoyable experience rather than be like "oh that's cool, now I have to suffer with this shit functionality after that small tidbit of mildly-interesting info". but you're probably a troll because none of that makes sense, and so much of it is just blatantly wrong

[dudewheresmydk]

wut? so... prydaz is counted for all 3 of my specs?

So, having played so much elemental and (slightly-less) enhancement on my shaman means that I get fucked over by having prydaz (the system recognizes me having 1 legendary for elemental and enhancement)?

The system is so fucked, I have 2 fucking legendaries in total and I hit lvl 110 in the second week of september. one being resto (which I play the least) and one an class-wide prydaz. fuck you blizzard, you're fucking horse shit

[Siglius]

If you've been playing since septemeber and only have 2 legendaries you've been doing something VERY wrong.

[VanishO2]

If you've been playing since septemeber and only have 2 legendaries you've been doing something VERY wrong.

Never blame RNG on people. Never.

- - - Updated - - -

Guess Blizzard will never get the fact that even WoW being a MMO, and inherently MMOs being endless, even MMOs must have some end points.

When they keep adding stuff to things that should be over by now (like reps), it really feels bad as you start to see that you'll never finish something in the game even months/years later.

The same goes for their AP problem (and all the grind in Legion), they don't get it that if there is nothing like a weekly cap for AP, things like that will happen and will burn out the players. Like someone said once, since they keep balancing raids bosses with the extra dmg from 35+ Artifact Traits, BiS Legendaries, Titanforged, etc... in mind, more and more people will feel like going for it. As long as there are tight dps checks that calls for the maximum power you can possible get on a character, this will happen.

And this happening, things goes bad for everything else in the game since people will start focusing on what gives them the most for less time and stop doing other things in the game (that they would be doing to have fun) like joining queues for pvp, events or whatever.

If the AP farm had a weekly cap that you could reasonable reach, things would be way lighter now (and Blizzard would be well aware where the world is in their artifact level and work their encounter balance better). And then if you feel like that you want to farm more, switch specs and start getting it on another artifact. Even people playing on alts wouldn't feel bad that all that AP should be going for their main character/artifact instead.

[Unholyground]

Honestly if they wanted to make world quests more appealing they should all give you either Hall Resources or AK as an addition.

[FROSTYRUNE]

With BM hunters our 2nd/3rd legendary which is a strong combo Belt/Ring will allow us to have 2 set tier 19 4 set tier20, we dont have to choose to not use legendaries...hahahahahaha

[Halstinavos]

So if you have Prydaz and Sephuz (or any other multi spec legendary), forget about trying to get legendaries for another spec. You get punished even more now, because you don't get the extra spec specific drop chance at all. Sweet. I'm sure I'll just get to sit and watch people with BIS legendaries switch loot spec and get BIS legendaries for their off-spec as well. Talk about demoralizing.

[prwraith]

This reads as a perfect example of why wow is dying. Blizzard is clueless.

[kaintk]

and again they dont want to listen to peoples, we just want to have a fucking token legendaries system that will repair everything

[Dug]

People can blame the playerbase all they like, but end of the day, Blizzard's aim is to retain players by having a long lasting game. In the 12 years of WoW, have players EVER paced this sort of thing and said "Oh you know, its not important, ill get it sooner or later".

No. Never. Never will.

Yes. Yes they have. Blizzard has the actual data to back up their statements. They can see everything the players are doing and look at trends and where players are putting the most time and effort. It's also just common sense. The majority of players are not endlessly grinding for 54. I certainly am not. But I'm also not a Mythic raider. I'm not even a Heroic raider at the moment. Even if I was if my guild demanded me to run 50 M+ every week I'd refuse and find someone else to play with.

That isn't to say the AP system isn't a flawed one because it very much is but players should hold themselves accountable for their actions and raiding "standards".

[MarkTheMadMad]

'Playing endless hours for a small advantage is not sustainable. '... but this is exactly the kinda shit they're going to do with AP farming on 7.2... what the fuck are they thinking about?

The winging and moaning about grind in this thread is unbelievable. I'd say about 80% of you don't even know what proper grind is. Try grinding AAXP in Everquest, or farming Hecks in Elysium in pre AI Anarchy online, or even the legendary quest chain in LOTRO. Only when you try these will you be happy with your themepark WoW

[Dvaldin]

Legendaries are cool, and the randomness of them doesn't bother me like it apparently does others. It's a big deal when I get one, but it's not a big deal if I don't. I do think it could have been cooler to obtain them via some extraordinary questlines like some of the artifact weapon ones. That also might've been a hassle though. I think any solution they come up with will have naysayers.

If what he says about AP working for the "vast majority of players" is correct, changing it after six months of having it the way it is has a pretty freaking big chance of backfiring. I like the way AP works now. I don't really feel the need to grind it like others so, but sometimes I might for a little bit. It seems like some of 7.2's changes are for the 0.5 percent playerbase and to push people into raiding more. Can't really judge until it arrives.

All in all, I'm having a good time in WoW...but the answers in the Q&A are somewhat troubling.

[ALF20]

Some legendary items have a name and fantasy that make them very distinct, so it wouldn't make sense to have them change based on your spec.

c'mon, this is not hard to work around this
Just change its name and whole tooltip/stats in the same time. Legendaries are locking us into specs